REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. -- Carolyn Vo Farmer has been a reliability engineer for AMRDEC's Engineering Directorate for 15 years and was the first executive officer to the director in 2007. She has performed duties supporting both aviation and missile systems and has traveled around the world to support reliability programs for the U.S. Army and our allies. She currently serves as the aviation team lead for Cargo and Special Projects, Reliability, Availability, Maintainability Engineering and System Assessment Division.

Through participation in 2016 with the Aviation and Missile Command's Advanced Leadership Investment for Tomorrow program, or AdvLIFT, Farmer had the opportunity to lead a diverse team as the project manager to develop and deploy the official mobile application for Team Redstone, the Redstone Explorer. The mobile app connects Team Redstone more effectively through safety and security notifications, installation information, and quality of life initiatives.

In regards to her heritage, Farmer's parents and two older sisters immigrated to America in 1978. Her father, a South Vietnamese Naval officer who worked alongside the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, was a prisoner of war after the fall of Saigon. After being released from the POW camp, he fled the country with his family and navigated a boat, using a compass and celestial navigation, with more than 100 refugees seeking freedom at the U.S. refugee camps in Malaysia.

Farmer's family eventually settled in Madison County, where she was born a few months later.
In 2016, Farmer was contacted by the chairman for Veterans Week 2016 Planning Commission to attend the Veteran's Dinner with her family in November.

"Mr. Max Bennett read my family's courageous story of how they escaped from a war-torn country and have transformed their family tree with the vast opportunities afforded to them here in America," said Farmer. "U.S. Army Materiel Command's Commanding General, General Gus F. Perna, came over to shake my father's hand immediately following the ceremony. He thanked my father for being there and for his courage to serve. It was a tremendous honor for my entire family to be recognized among an audience of our country's amazing veterans."

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U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to provide innovative research, development and engineering to produce capabilities for decisive overmatch to the Army against the complexities of the current and future operating environments in support of the Joint Warfighter and the Nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Material Command.